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A Way to Give Authors a Lucrative Second Platform

Lawrence Wright at the Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton University.Credit
Sameer Khan

Even before Lawrence Wright, a staff writer for The New Yorker, won a Pulitzer Prize for his book “The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11,” he was one of the busiest lecturing authors published by Alfred A. Knopf. For April and May, he had been booked to speak at Princeton and Wesleyan Universities, at a public relations seminar in Santa Barbara, Calif., and at a lunch in Chicago sponsored by the Northern Trust Bank.

But Mr. Wright is not on the typical whirlwind book tour, when authors make free appearances at bookstores and talk shows to promote their latest work. Rather, he is being paid to speak by the host groups, which also cover his travel expenses.

The engagements are arranged by the Knopf Speakers Bureau, which was set up a year and a half ago to sell books and market authors after the initial publicity campaign, and has helped the company’s authors earn extra money. Mr. Wright’s best seller, which was published last summer, is for sale wherever he speaks.

Mr. Wright says the Knopf Speakers Bureau has changed his life. Victoria Gerken, its manager, “kind of holds my whole calendar,” he said, “and is also a really good counselor for me — it’s like having my own office.”

In the last two years, several major publishing houses have set up speakers bureaus. HarperCollins was the first, in May 2005, followed by Random House, which set up a partnership with an existing company, the American Program Bureau, rather than build its own.

Knopf and Penguin established in-house speakers bureaus in 2006, and two other publishers, Holtzbrinck and the Hachette Book Group, may do the same.

All the companies say they are responding to common industry trends: fleeting tastes in mass-market books, shrinking shelf lives in bookstores, disappearing book review sections, and the brief attention span of a media audience hooked on celebrity sound bites and Hollywood entertainment.

A speakers bureau “goes beyond the traditional marketing opportunities,” said Jamie Brickhouse, who heads the HarperCollins enterprise. “It’s a way for authors to continue to raise their profiles and reach new audiences. It’s great for the frontlist and for the backlist, and has brought new life to authors who don’t have an ongoing book push.”

One example is Jean Strouse, whose biography of J. P. Morgan, “Morgan: American Financier,” was published in paperback by Harper Perennial in 2000 and who recently gave a paid lecture for the Chilton Investment Company, a fund manager.

HarperCollins recently sent James L. Swanson, author of “Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer,” to Frederick, Md., to participate in the city’s Frederick Reads program (his book sold 1,000 copies there). And it arranged for the restaurateur Danny Meyer, author of “Setting the Table,” a book about business hospitality, to speak in Philadelphia to 350 executives of Campbell Soup.

Photo

James L. Swanson signing books in Frederick, Md.Credit
Frederick Community College

Corporate clients tend to pay higher honorariums than institutions like schools and libraries, publishing executives say. If a group cannot afford the standard fee, which ranges from $5,000 to $7,500, sometimes the publisher will offer a discount based on a guarantee of a certain number of book sales.

A middle-tier author might make $15,000 to $35,000 a year in speaking fees, depending on the demand for his or her services and how many engagements he or she is willing to take on, according to the executives. The speakers bureau’s commission tends to be 20 percent.

Bookstores are frequently enlisted to do the bookselling at events, which helps them share in the benefits of an author’s coming to town. Paul Bogaards, who started the Knopf Speakers Bureau, said, “We want booksellers to become co-brokers — if they find business for us locally, we will split the commission with them.”

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Not everyone is thrilled by the trend. Sara Nelson, editor in chief of Publishers Weekly, said she was worried that it put too much pressure on authors to hone their presentation skills, potentially at the expense of their literary development. “If whether you’re able to sell yourself as a speaker is part of finding a publisher or not concerns me,” she said.

Carlton Sedgeley, founder of the Royce Carlton lecture agency, dismissed the notion of bringing such a demanding business in-house. Contracts must be drawn up, fees and travel expenses negotiated, travel arrangements made and, most important, clients identified and cultivated. “They’ll all fail,” he said.

He scoffs at the lesser-known, midlist and emerging authors the publishers have been working to promote alongside more established names — many of whom already have lecture representation. “They can’t sell them, they can’t give them away,” he said.

He has a best-selling Random House author, Anna Quindlen, all locked up, he said, “and she gets $35,000” a lecture. Many writers with the in-house bureaus receive a fraction of that. “It’s been tried before,” he said, “and it never works out.”

He referred to five years in the 1970s, when Esther Margolis, then Bantam’s marketing and publicity chief, started the Bantam Lecture Bureau. The venture grew so large and diversified — branching out to show business and movie figures — that the publisher decided to back out.

“But things are different now,” said Ms. Margolis, president of Newmarket Publishing and Communications. “There are many more publicizable authors, authors are more in demand, and more clients are looking. The whole evolution of the superstore created book marketplaces in sections of the U.S. that would not have had that before.”

In-house speakers bureaus have also been helped by the Internet, which lets them connect with potential clients faster and more easily than they would have in the past.

The Penguin Speakers Bureau has just celebrated its first anniversary by introducing a Web site. “I had some goals for this year,” the director, Jacqueline Fischetti, said. “I wanted to sign up at least 30 great speakers, and we already have more than that. There’s the Web site.”